Witch's Holiday
by Platinum Dragoness
Summary: Kim keeps things to herself.  set early in Kim and Jacqueline's partnership


A/n: Originally written for xaliceunknownx in se_ladyfest

"Are you sure you don't want to come? It's going to be the best party of the year." Jacqueline paused to consider. "Well, having a mission tonight would be even better, but the party's still going to be great."

"I'm still not feeling well." Kim managed a weak cough.

"Sorry. What am I saying, I should stay here with you and nurse you back to health, like you did last time I was sick."

"No!" That was too loud for her current state, both the one she was in and the one she was supposedly in. "Don't worry about it. I'll be happy knowing you're having fun at the Halloween party. I'm just tired. Some peace and quiet and I'll be fine."

Did Jacqueline look hurt, or think this was her fault? Was she offended Kim had told her to go away? Kim scrambled to think of a way to soften what she'd said.

But Jacqueline smiled. "Okay. I won't hurry back then. I bet Ox will be inconsolable."

Kim rolled her eyes. "If you really feel sorry for me, bring me goodies back." Like she would ever willingly turn down free food.

Jacqueline let the door swing behind her with a loose-limbed grace reminiscent of her weapon form. Kim rolled over enough to turn off the light.

In the bright moonlight, Kim let herself tremble all over. She wasn't lying around from weakness or sickness like she might claim: quite the opposite. Energy was coursing through her. Maybe she should go jogging or do jumping jacks. Right now. She needed to move.

She held still. The magic was in the air. Don't encourage it, she told herself.

She was sweating. Everyone would have agreed she looked sick if they had been able to see her.

There was a loud noise and she jumped. Fireworks? No, burglars? It was too early for it to be Jacqueline, but had someone else giddy and clumsy on candy and soda left the party and come to visit her and tripped over a trash can?

There was rustling, and it was when a shadow covered the grinning moon that she realized it wasn't coming from the stairs or door but the window.

She looked up. A tanuki, furry and dark with the light behind it.

"No."

The tanuki stopped its chittering purr and held still, it could not resist the will of its witch, but it would take true effort to send it away when it did not want to. October was an unfortunate times. The spring's pups had left their wise mothers but had not gained wisdom of their own. Animals that knew better would leave her alone.

She could run. Climb out the window and become a tanuki-everyone knew they were tricksters and shapechangers. It would be so easy.

No! She must not drop Soul Protect!

Still, taking control of a tanuki's mind wouldn't even take that. Blood of her blood, flesh of her flesh. She could at least take her consciousness away from Death City. In the dead lands the magic would spark this night and she could dance with it, or she could go to the deep desert, the lands that had never lived in all the memories of the elders, and find peace there in the emptiness.

There would even be covens gathering. The cautious would not venture so close to Shibusen, but there were always the bold or those ordered to keep watch by masters they feared more than any meister. Witches were usually solitary but for their servants, but the Eldest had declared that witches meet with the turn of the moon.

Kim could imagine it vividly. The sweet-bitter scent of incense of cloves and sandalwood. The sour taste of kumis, a drink of fermented mare's milk and spices that many witches favored, lapped from a shall bowl, or smooth scotch, distilled over peat fire in the old country and aged for a human's short lifespan. The chants of the black sabbath, sung by heart in a language she didn't understand. Some would arrive remotely in an animal avatar or a golem, some in animal form, others in witch's flesh with their whole entourage along. Beyond true witches, there would be there usual servants and riffraff: witches' sons with enough glimmer of magic to not have been drown at birth, rogue meisters and weapons who had fled Shibusen or never been properly trained there, human men a witch had taken as a lover and not tired of yet, some werewolves or skin-dancers, perhaps.

No one would know her. _They would hate me if they knew_ was the mantra of her life, but that only mattered as far as it meant danger. No one would have to find out enough about her to start an argument about her lifestyle choices. She was no child to be picked on as far as anyone could get away with without offering insult to her mother. A full witch at a coven wasn't going to be challenged by a mere minion and one who came by bond-animal was hardly threatening to a dominant witch. Power among witches meant one thing: the ability to do what she wanted.

Power to go or power to stay. Power to go to Shibusen and use her magic for healing. That a witch's chaos meant destruction was a perversion. Chaos meant choice, meant her will being done whether or not it was the way things had been done before or the status quo. That was the promise of magic.

That was why she could sit inside on Samhain and eat a bit of soup and do some homework and do _nothing_ about the itch under her skin.

"Kim~. Are you still up?"

_If I hadn't been, you'd have woken me,_ she thought irritably, but the exhaustion of her internal struggle was taking its toll and the words didn't come out. Instead, she managed the excuse that seemed so important at that moment, "I think 'possums got into the trash cans," before falling into a restless sleep.


End file.
